[p2p-research] post-scarcity critique of marxism

[Michel Bauwens]

via paul fernhout,

this critique is from the opposite point of the view as that of james
quilligan we forwarded yesterday,

Michelk



>From the article: "Listen Marxist" (excerpt),
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/listenm.html


[edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Murray_Bookchin%27s_Post-Scarcity_Critique_of_Marxism?title=Murray_Bookchin%27s_Post-Scarcity_Critique_of_Marxism&action=edit&section=2>
] Text

Murray Bookchin:

Our concern here is with those honest revolutionaries who have turned to
Marxism, Leninism or Trotskyism because they earnestly seek a coherent
social outlook and an effective strategy of revolution. We are also
concerned with those who are awed by the theoretical repertory of Marxist
ideology and are disposed to flirt with it in the absence of more systematic
alternatives. To these people we address ourselves as brothers and sisters
and ask for a serious discussion and a comprehensive re-evaluation. We
believe that Marxism has ceased to be applicable to our time not because it
is too visionary or revolutionary, but because it is not visionary or
revolutionary enough. We believe it was born of an era of scarcity and
presented as a brilliant critique of that era, specifically of industrial
capitalism, and that a new era is in birth which Marxism does not adequately
encompass and whose outlines it only partially and onesidedly anticipated.

We argue that the problem is not to "abandon" Marxism, or to "annul" it, but
to transcend it dialectically, just as Marx transcended Hegelian philosophy,
Ricardian economics, and Blanquist tactics and modes of organization. We
shall argue that in a more advanced stage of capitalism than Marx dealt with
a century ago, and in a more advanced stage of technological development
than Marx could have clearly anticipated, a new critique is necessary, which
in turn yields new modes of struggle, or organization, of propaganda and of
lifestyle. Call these new modes whatever you wish. We have chosen to call
this new approach post-scarcity anarchism, for a number of compelling
reasons which will become evident in the pages that follow.


*THE HISTORICAL LIMITS OF MARXISM*

The idea that a man whose greatest theoretical contributions were made
between 1840 and 1880 could "foresee" the entire dialectic of capitalism is,
on the face of it, utterly preposterous. If we can still learn much from
Marx's insights, we can learn even more from the unavoidable errors of a man
who was limited by an era of material scarcity and a technology that barely
involved the use of electric power. We can learn how different our own era
is from that of all past history, how qualitatively new are the
potentialities that confront us, how unique are the issues, analyses and
praxis that stand before us if we are to make a revolution and not another
historical abortion.

...

Is it conceivable that historical problems and methods of class analysis
based entirely on unavoidable scarcity can be transplanted into a new era of
potential abundance? Is it conceivable that an economic analysis focused
primarily on a "freely competitive" system of industrial capitalism can be
transferred to a managed system of capitalism, where state and monopolies
combine to manipulate economic life? Is it conceivable that a strategic and
tactical repertory formulated in a period when steel and coal constituted
the basis of industrial technology can be transferred to an age based on
radically new sources of energy, on electronics, on cybernation?

...


As a result of this transfer, a theoretical corpus which was liberating a
century ago is turned into a straitjacket today. We are asked to focus on
the working class as the "agent" of revolutionary change at a time when
capitalism visibly antagonizes and produces revolutionaries among virtually
all strata of society, particularly the young.

...

The critical question we face is this: can we explain the transition from a
class society to a classless society by means of the same dialectic that
accounts for the transition of one class society to another? This is not a
textbook problem that involves the judging of logical abstractions but a
very real and concrete issue for our time.

...

The worker becomes a revolutionary not by becoming more of a worker but by
undoing his "workerness." And in this he is not alone; the same applies to
the farmer, the student, the clerk, the soldier, the bureaucrat, the
professional--and the Marxist. The worker is no less a "bourgeois" than the
farmer, student, clerk, soldier, bureaucrat, professional--and Marxist. His
"workerness" is the disease he is suffering from, the social affliction
telescoped to individual dimensions."


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